Damn this is just sad. Abbath has been battling various health problems and addictions for some time. Like, Azazel's frontman Lord Satanacchia was drunk as fuck in that viral video from their 2017 Steelfest gig, but at least the band finished their set.

And in case you fellas need some context: https://chaoszine.net/the-bad-luck-of-saarihelvetti-abbath-and-more-cancel-performances/

Well, that was awkward.

It was a normal Tuesday otherwise. However, somewhere around 21:00 (Finnish time, UTC +2) Sopuli went offline due to a sudden database problem. It wasn't a problem I could fix immediately, so I decided to wait until the next day. @[email protected] helped me once again, and with his help we looked at the problem, and the database was restored from a backup made at 18:00 on Tuesday. Great thanks to him!

Because of the time gap, new data from 18:00 UTC+2 to 21:00 UTC+2 wasn't recoverable. I doubt there was an Internet equivalent to James Joyce's Ulysses among the data, but this has to be mentioned. This may affect federating posts and comments to other instances.

There was no way to just ignore an instance this active being offline for this long and move on. For normal users it creates uncertainty and for admins solving it may sometimes be nerve-wracking. I hope you all have been patient. After all, Sopuli hadn't been offline this long for over two years. The last time was in June 2024 when Sopuli was migrated from Hetzner's VPS to dedicated server hardware. It also took over a day, and it was surely nerve-wracking for me. All the effort was worth it, and because of improved website performance, long downtime has been an exception ever since.

This was unexpected downtime, but hopefully anything like this won't happen again for a really long time.

As always, you can get information about possible downtime by following me on Mastodon or by joining Sopuli's Matrix space.

Hope you all have a good day! (Or night, when I am writing this)

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Noh, tämäpä oli noloa.

Se oli muuten normaali tiistai. Kuitenkin joskus klo 21 aikaan Sopuli meni pois linjoilta yhtäkkisen tietokantaongelman takia. Se ei ollut ongelma jonka olisin voinut korjata heti, minkä takia päätin odottaa seuraavaan päivään.@[email protected] auttoi minua taas kerran, ja hänen avullaan katsoimme ongelmaan, ja tietokanta palautettiin tiistaina klo 18 otetusta varmuuskopiosta. Paljon kiitoksia hänelle!

Varmuuskopion ja tietokannan kippaamisen välillä on toki aikaväli 18–21. Tämän takia sillä välillä syntynyttä uutta dataa ei voitu palauttaa. Epäilen tosin että sen datan joukossa oli mitään Internetin vastinetta James Joycen Odysseukselle, mutta tämä on kuitenkin mainittava. Tämä voi vaikuttaa viestien ja vastausten federoitumiseen muille instansseille.

Näin aktiivisen instanssin kaatumista ei voi mitenkään sivuuttaa ja jatkaa menoa normaalisti. Tavallisille käyttäjille se luo epävarmuutta, ja ylläpitäjille sen ratkaiseminen voi raastaa hermoja. Toivottavasti olette olleet kärsivällisiä. Sopuli ei ole kuitenkaan ollut poissa linjoilta näin pitkään yli kahteen vuoteen. Viimeisin kerta oli kesäkuussa 2024 kun Sopuli siirrettiin Hetznerin virtuaalipalvelimelta dedikoidulle palvelimelle. Siinä kesti yli päivän, ja se tosiaankin raastoi hermojani. Kaikki siihen käytetty vaiva oli kuitenkin sen arvoista, ja parantuneen suorituskyvyn takia pitkä poissaolo linjoilta on ollut siitä lähtien poikkeus.

Tämä oli odottamaton sattumus, mutta toivon että mitään tällaista ei tapahdu uudelleen todella pitkään aikaan.

Kuten aina, saatte tietoa mahdollisesta kaatumisesta seuraamalla minua Mastodonissa tai liittymällä Sopulin Matrix-tilaan.

Toivottavasti teillä kaikilla on hyvä päivä! (Tai yö, kun kirjoitan tätä)

The GameBall Pro got out of prototyping:

GameBall Pro will be a right-handed trackball with a 44mm ball and the latest internal gaming grade components. It will be wired and wireless (2.4GHz) and run at 1000hz polling rate. In addition, it will have a Bluetooth connection option at 125Hz. You can find out more details about GameBall Pro from our videos on YouTube. We will be releasing more videos as we get closer to preorders.

Recently, we met our final major prototyping milestone. We have no outstanding issues and have moved into final testing and manufacturing preparations. This puts us about 2 months out for preorders unless we discover an issue during final testing, but so far so good. The goal would be to start pre-orders around early October and deliver to customers around a month later. The final price will be announced as we get closer, and be in line with similar products from Kensington and Elecom.

The GameBall Pro prelease will have a special Limited Edition (LE) version. This version will have a red ball, red base, and red logo. The final version Standard Edition (SE) will have a black ball and black base and grey logo. All the internals and functions will be the same. After we sell out of the pre-release units, we will release the SE version. I anticipate this will happen quickly.

Regarding the original GameBall which will be discontinued:

I have made the difficult decision to discontinue the original GameBall trackball, primarily due to rising production costs. Manufacturing the original model in the United Kingdom has become economically unsustainable; maintaining production would require a retail price well beyond market competitiveness.

I want to extend my sincere gratitude to our UK manufacturing partner for their exceptional work over the years. However, the commercial landscape for manufacturing a trackball in the UK has fundamentally shifted, and current labor, material, and service costs are no longer practical.

Final Inventory Release: We have secured one final production batch at our previous pricing. These units will be available for purchase on Thursday July 30th at 1:00 PM PST. Once sold out, the original GameBall will be permanently retired. Warranty & Pricing: These final units will retain the standard warranty and return policy, and will be priced at $188 USD (shipping charges are separate). We have set aside a portion of this inventory specifically to honor warranty claims moving forward. Shipping Limitations: Due to logistical constraints, this final batch can only be shipped within the United States. I apologize to our international customers. If you are located outside the US and wish to secure a unit, you will need to arrange independent freight forwarding.

Sopuli was upgraded to Lemmy 0.19.20, whose performance improvements reduce the backend's memory usage. Performance hasn't really been a problem, but I decided to upgrade Sopuli regardless.

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Sopuli päivitettiin Lemmyn versioon 0.19.20, jonka parannukset suorituskykyyn vähentävät taustapalveluiden muistinkäyttöä. Suorituskyky ei ole ollut juuri ongelmana, mutta päätin silti päivittää Sopulin.

Eduskunnan keskustelut Garden Helsingistä ovat kestäneet jo monta tuntia, värikästä keskustelua tosiaankin.

Suoraa lähetystä voi seurata esimerkiksi Yle Areenan kautta: https://areena.yle.fi/1-78428516